This book has been made possible with the help of many others.

Funding for this project was provided by the Government of Ontario’s Enabling Change Program.

Human resources were provided by the Digital Education Strategies team at The G. Raymond Chang School for Continuing Education at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, including an instructional designer, web developer, and production editor. Contributors include:

• Greg Gay (Subject Matter Expert)
• Marcel “Chuck” Labrie (Instructional Designer)
• Kelvin Kong (Production Editor)
• Igor Karasyov (Web Developer)
• Marta Kule (Web Technology Analyst)
• Frank Miller (Change Management)
• Christopher West (Government Perspective)

Most business leaders would agree that reaching the broadest audience is good for a business’s bottom line. A good portion of that audience will be people with disabilities. How, though, would an organization go about ensuring it is as accessible as it can be to all its potential clients or customers, including people with disabilities?

This book has been created to answer this question, and to demystify “digital accessibility” as a business practice. It brings together all the pieces of the digital accessibility picture, and provides strategies and resources that will help make digital accessibility a part of an organization’s business culture.

The book is an adaptation of the massive open online course (MOOC) of the same name, developed through The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education at Ryerson University and offered through the Canvas Network. To see when the course will be offered next, check the course website.

Though the book originates in Ontario, Canada, and includes some discussion of the Accessibility for Ontarian’s with Disabilities Act (AODA), the content will be relevant to a global audience. Accessibility as it applies to AODA and Ontarians, applies equally in other jurisdictions, albeit perhaps in some cases, without the motivation of the law to enforce it as a requirement. Many in other jurisdictions are watching Ontario as it rolls out its 20-year plan to make the province the most accessible jurisdiction in the world.

Though this book is aimed at educating business leaders and managers about digital accessibility as a business practice, it will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand organizational culture in general, and how digital accessibility fits into that culture. What you’ll learn about in this book goes well beyond accommodating people with disabilities or adhering to the law. It is about improving your bottom line and ensuring your business or organization is able to serve its whole audience — not just those who are able bodied or using the latest technology, but also those from the margins of society, who are often overlooked by the mainstream. Being a good “corporate citizen” and “doing the right thing” are phrases often used to justify making an effort to remove potential barrier to goods and services, but it’s more than that.

The business arguments for accessibility are many. They are about reaching the broadest audience possible. People with disabilities have family and friends, who will go elsewhere if together they are unable to effectively access your business’s website or digital content. When you consider that people with disabilities make up nearly 15% of the population (WHO), when you include mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and more, that number can reach 50% of the population who are affected by disability in one way or another. Most businesses would have a hard time justifying serving only 50% of their potential customer base.

The bottom line: Digital accessibility is good for business.

Greg Gay has been in the Web accessibility field since the mid 1990s as an auditor and as the lead on many research and development projects that push the boundaries of accessibility in information technology. He has been involved in e-learning just as long, with more than 20 online courses to his name. He is the originator of the ATutor and AContent open source e-learning systems started in the late 1990s, both designed to model accessibility in online learning. He teaches a variety of workshops, both technical and non-technical, evangelizing inclusive design as a best practice for building IT systems that are usable by everyone.

Sharp Clothing Company Digital Accessibility Policy

Effective Date: July 7, 2017

Background

Why is a digital accessibility policy necessary?

The Sharp Clothing Company (the company), being based in Ontario, Canada, is required under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA 2005), to ensure its digital information is accessible to people with disabilities.

Commitment

The Company is committed to improving and maintaining access to its digital information. First, as a social responsibility, to ensure no one is excluded from working at, or being a customer of the company. Second, in its efforts to expand its market coverage, the company will ensure its accessibility standards meet those for an international audience.

Accessibility Committee

The Accessibility Committee (AC) will be made up of senior representatives and knowledgeable staff from each of the company’s departments. The committee will meet quarterly, and when necessary to address significant accessibility-related issues.

The AC will be led by the accessibility coordinator (i.e., the Accessibility Champion)

Scope and Goals

The AC will be responsible for:

• Raising accessibility awareness
• Encouraging feedback to share problems and solutions
• Implementing quality-assurance procedures
• Handling legal matters related to accessibility
• Providing web and digital accessibility support
• Developing internal accessibility standards
• Representing the organization in public affairs related to accessibility

Authority and Enforcement

The AC will have the authority to make adjustments to current processes throughout the company to ensure that accessibility requirements are being met.

The AC will also have the authority to delay release of products to the public, if accessibility does not meet company accessibility standards.

The AC will have the authority to recommend dismissal of staff who are unwilling to follow or repeatedly disregard the company’s accessibility standards or policies.

Support

The accessibility coordinator will be the main point of contact for company staff, who have questions or concerns related to digital accessibility.

The accessibility coordinator will be the main point of contact for the public with digital accessibility–related enquiries.

The AC will maintain a digital accessibility knowledge base within the company’s main website, which will be available for all staff.

In the Contact Us form on the company website, “accessibility” will be included as a reason for the contact among the other given options. When selected, enquiries will be sent directly to the accessibility coordinator. The accessibility coordinator will direct the enquiry to the appropriate person (if required) as soon as it is feasible to do so, or will respond as soon as possible, taking no longer than 24 hours to reply.

Guidelines and Standards

The AC will be responsible for developing and maintaining a set of company digital accessibility guidelines. These guidelines will include:

• Website and Web Application Accessibility Guidelines
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
• Document Accessibility Guidelines
• Multimedia Accessibility Guidelines

Website Development

The company websites, or any website or application created after this policy is issued, shall meet WCAG Level AA requirements outlined in the company’s Website and Web Application Accessibility Guidelines, except where it is unrealistic to do so or where undue hardship has been established.

Undue hardship will be determined by the AC in cases where the cost is excessive, where technology or an equivalent does not exist in an accessible form, where health or safety are at risk, and where external funding is unavailable to assist with excessive costs.

Website Content

All content added to the website after this policy is issued, shall meet WCAG Level AA requirements outlined in the company’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Documents and Communications

All documents and communications authored after this policy is issued will meet the requirements of the company’s Document Accessibility Guidelines.

Multimedia

All multimedia produced by the company after this policy is issued, will have captions for video and transcripts for audio, as outlined in the company’s Multimedia Accessibility Guidelines.

Third-Party Digital Content

Where third-party documents, web content, or web applications are used after all effort has been made to obtain these in an accessible form, the company will not be responsible for their lack of accessibility, and the company will acknowledge this fact in a way that is accessible and easily discoverable by customers or employees.

Hiring Equity and Employment Accommodation

The company will make an effort to hire qualified people with disabilities, and where candidate qualifications are comparable, favour the person with a disability.

The company will question candidates about digital accessibility related to the position for which the candidate is applying; and where candidates are comparable, the company will favour those with more accessibility knowledge.

The company will provide appropriate assistive technology or other accommodation for any employee making such a request and can demonstrate an associated disability.

The company will establish and maintain a full-time Accessibility Specialist position and, within one year of this policy being established, hire a person with digital accessibility expertise for the role of accessibility coordinator or to act as a consultant, taking on the role of Accessibility Engineer within the company’s IT group.

Training and Awareness

The AC will develop and maintain a series of educational units on various aspects of digital accessibility, consisting of documents, videos, web-based training, and in-class workshops, that will be offered periodically to ensure staff are adequately trained on accessibility issues associated with their position. These units will include:

• Accessible Document Authoring
• How People with Disabilities Use the Web
• Basic Web Accessibility
• Advanced Web Accessibility with WAI-ARIA
• Web Accessibility Auditing
• Multimedia Captioning

The AC will also be responsible for creating and maintaining an accessibility statement to be linked prominently on the main website. The statement will describe the company’s commitment to accessibility and outlines accessibility features available on the website to assist users navigating the site with assistive technology.

Digital Accessibility Resources

The AC will establish and maintain the company’s accessibility knowledge base, which will contain a variety of resources including:

• The company accessibility guidelines
• Documentation on web and document accessibility methods
• Instructional videos on digital accessibility
• Annual accessibility reports
• Templates for Requests for Proposals (RFP) and contract accessibility wording
• Promotional items to highlight company accessibility efforts

Procurement

All Requests for Proposals (RFP) involving digital content or products will include wording that requests details regarding a product’s accessibility. Accessibility will be prioritized when judging proposals, so that lack of accessibility is likely to disqualify or significantly disadvantage a vendor.

Contracts with vendors will include language that commits the vendor to supplying products at an agreed-upon level of accessibility. Vendors will be obligated to address accessibility issues not previously acknowledged and/or dismissed.

Purchasing will acquire products and service that are the most accessible, except in cases where there is not a satisfactory or comparable product with a given set of features or functionality that provides accessibility.

The AC will prepare templates for RFP and contract language and maintain them through the company’s accessibility knowledge base.

Accessibility Auditing and Quality Assurance

Accessibility quality assurance will be added to and maintained throughout the company’s processes. Before digital content is distributed publicly, it must be reviewed by someone other than the author who is familiar with the accessibility elements that the type of content being reviewed entails. This will include all documents, content posted to the websites, and promotional materials distributed to the public.

In the case of website development, the author’s code will be reviewed by another knowledgeable IT staff member; and, before the development is made available to the public, it will be reviewed by the accessibility coordinator. Where the accessibility coordinator identifies issues, those issues must be corrected on the recommendation of the accessibility coordinator.

Monitoring and Periodic Reviews

The accessibility coordinator will be responsible for conducting periodic spot checks on digital content and for conducting annual accessibility audits on the company’s websites.

Any issues identified during checks and audits will be directed to those responsible for the content in question, who will be required to address the issues as instructed by the accessibility coordinator

In cases where checks fail consistently, the accessibility coordinator will arrange additional training for the employee(s) responsible for the failures.

Reporting

Following the annual audit of the company’s websites, the accessibility coordinator, with the assistance of the AC, will produce a formal report on the accessibility status of the company’s websites. The status report will be presented at the next quarterly senior management meeting and archived in the accessibility knowledge base.

Policy Review

This policy will be reviewed annually by the AC and adjustments made where necessary. If modified, the policy will be approved by the company’s senior director within 30 days of the update.

Chapter 1 Summary

This chapter is aimed at getting you familiar with the book and how to make the most of this learning experience.

Chapter 2 Summary

In this chapter, you learned the following points about understanding accessibility:

• When a business addresses digital accessibility, it actually saves money and doing so is not a non-recoverable cost to the business.
• There is a strong potential for a significant increase in customers for businesses that address digital accessibility.
• Digital accessibility should not be an afterthought but rather it needs to be part of the business strategy and the daily operations of the business.
• Addressing accessibility is a quality attribute of business and improves its profile.

Chapter 3 Summary

In this chapter, you learned these aspects about establishing a digital accessibility committee:

• Disability sensitivity training, a good understanding of accessibility and standards such as WCAG, accessibility barriers, are all key knowledge areas required in different company roles.
• Accessibility committee members should be chosen strategically and should represent a good cross-section of the business.

Chapter 4 Summary

In this chapter, you learned the following about creating a digital accessibility culture:

• Accessibility auditing is an important step. Choosing a reputable service involves careful consideration focusing on key reputability factors.
• Two approaches to accessible websites are retrofitting and starting over. The correct approach for your situation will need to consider several factors including outsourcing the work to external vendors.
• Building a company-wide strategy about accessibility includes building awareness, hiring people with disabilities, focused presentations and training.
• Web development accessibility guidelines focus on user interaction with a website whereas web content accessibility guidelines focus more on standards compliance. Both are important.
• Several approaches should be used to monitor adherence to accessibility guidelines including unbiased quality assurance reviews and the use of automated tools.
• Implementing accessibility will include managing change. Kotter’s Eight-Step Model for Leading Change and Lewin’s Three-Step Model are two common models that can help plan and facilitate the implementation.
• Resistance by staff may be the most challenging element in implementing change and overcoming the five main reasons people resist change needs to be part of your change management strategy.

Chapter 5 Summary

In this chapter, you learned the following about procurement and accessibility policy:

• To be successful, an effective web accessibility policy should be rooted within the business culture following the WebAIM eight-step process.
• A web accessibility policy should include procurement practices for both IT and non-IT related goods and services.
• Vendors should be able to verify and validate the accessibility compliance of their products and services.

Chapter 6 Summary

In this chapter, you learned the following points about hiring accessibility staff:

• Companies are missing out on a significant talent pool of highly educated and skilled workers when they exclude people with disabilities in their hiring practices.
• Few formal technical training programs focus on developing accessible web content and creating self-taught specialists. Each have some common knowledge, as well as informal personal skill sets related to accessible content.

Elements in Your Toolkit

Self-Test 1

1. In Ontario, which section of the AODA Information and Communication Standards addresses website and web content accessibility?
   1. [incorrect] Section 6
   2. [incorrect] Section 12
   3. [incorrect] Section 13
   4. [correct] Section 14
   5. [incorrect] Section 18
2. In the U.S., when are obligated organizations required to comply with the recent changes to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act?
   1. [incorrect] January 1, 2019
   2. [incorrect] January 1, 2018
   3. [correct] January 18, 2018
   4. [incorrect] March 17, 2017
   5. [incorrect] January 1, 2017

Back to Self-Test 1

Self-Test 2

1. Of the following roles, which roles need a good understanding of WCAG 2.0, as opposed to a basic understanding? Choose all that apply.
   1. [incorrect] Graphic artists
   2. [correct] Web developers
   3. [incorrect] Web content editors
   4. [incorrect] Video support staff
   5. [correct] Procurement and purchasing staff
   6. [incorrect] Retail store staff
2. Which of the following should be goals and responsibilities of an accessibility committee? Choose all that apply.
   1. [incorrect] Planning the annual company golf tournament.
   2. [correct] Raising accessibility awareness
   3. [correct] Representing the organization in public affairs related to accessibility
   4. [correct] Encouraging feedback to share problems and solutions
   5. [correct] Developing internal accessibility standards
   6. [correct] Implementing accessibility in quality assurance procedures
   7. [correct] Consulting on legal matters related to accessibility
   8. [correct] Providing web and digital accessibility support

Back to Self-Test 2

Self-Test 3

1. Which of the following factors might you take into consideration when selecting a service to audit the accessibility of your organization’s website? Choose all that apply.
   1. [correct] How long the firm has been in business?
   2. [correct] Does the firm’s auditing processes align with W3C accessibility auditing best practices?
   3. [correct] Does the firm provide automated self-assessment tools for accessibility checking?
   4. [correct] Does the firm offer training for your staff?
   5. [incorrect] Do auditing staff have a university accessibility degree?
2. When self-assessing web accessibility, which of the following are strategies that might be used? Choose all that apply.
   1. [correct] Conduct a Tab key test.
   2. [correct] Use automated accessibility checkers.
   3. [correct] Assign people with disabilities to carry out testing.
   4. [correct] Use a screen reader to navigate through a website.
   5. [correct] Conduct colour contrast testing using an online tool.

Back to Self-Test 3

Self-Test 4

1. When recommending accessibility requirements for web developers, it is best to send them directly to WCAG, on the W3C website.
   1. [incorrect] True
   2. [correct] False
2. When recommending guidelines for staff that produce PDF documents, WCAG should be suggested.
   1. [incorrect] True
   2. [correct] False

Back to Self-Test 4

Self-Test 5

1. Lewin’s change model includes eight key steps for managing change.
   1. [incorrect] True
   2. [correct] False
2. Of the following, which one is not a stage of the Kotter Model?
   1. [incorrect] Communicate the Vision
   2. [incorrect] Create Urgency
   3. [correct] Misunderstanding
   4. [incorrect] Create Short-Term Wins

Back to Self-Test 5

Self-Test 6

1. How many steps does the WebAIM accessibility policy implementation model have?
   1. [incorrect] 5
   2. [incorrect] 6
   3. [incorrect] 7
   4. [correct] 8
   5. [incorrect] 9
   6. [incorrect] 10
2. When creating an accessibility statement, which of the following were mentioned as elements that might be included in the statement? Choose all that apply.
   1. [correct] Known accessibility issues
   2. [correct] Website accessibility features
   3. [correct] Statement of commitment
   4. [correct] Statement of compliance
   5. [incorrect] The name of the website’s developer

Back to Self-Test 6

Self-Test 7

1. When vendors are describing the level of accessibility their product complies with, they should mention Level AAA.
   1. [incorrect] True
   2. [correct] False
2. If a vendor mentions a few known accessibility issues in their accessibility statement for a product, purchasing or licensing the product should be avoided.
   1. [incorrect] True
   2. [correct] False

Back to Self-Test 7

Self-Test 8

1. When hiring a new graduate web developer, they should list at least one course they took on web accessibility.
   1. [incorrect] True
   2. [correct] False
2. Workplace accommodations for a person who is blind would typically include which of the following technologies? Choose all that apply.
   1. [correct] Screen reader
   2. [incorrect] Voice recognition
   3. [incorrect] Trackball
   4. [incorrect] Text-to-speech
   5. [incorrect] Screen magnification

Back to Self-Test 8

Self-Test 9

1. Described in Accessibility Awareness Requirements in Other Organizational Roles, it is important for Management to have the following accessibility related knowledge. Choose all that apply.
   1. [correct] Knowledge of local and relevant international accessibility–related regulations
   2. [correct] Knowledge of accessibility policy
   3. [incorrect] Knowledge of disabilities and associated barriers
   4. [incorrect] Document accessibility (e.g., invoices, receipts, and product specifications)
   5. [incorrect] User interface accessibility design
2. Which of the following would be a typical accommodation for a person with fine-motor impairment. Choose all that apply.
   1. [correct] Speech recognition software
   2. [correct] Eye tracking hardware
   3. [correct] Button switch hardware
   4. [correct] Large-key keyboard
   5. [incorrect] Screen reader software
   6. [incorrect] Screen magnification software
   7. [correct] Head mouse hardware

Back to Self-Test 9

1. Activity: Create the Sharp Clothing Company’s Digital Accessibility Policy
2. Challenge Test 9

Activity: Create the Sharp Clothing Company’s Digital Accessibility Policy

Challenge Test 9

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